Cesarić was one of the most prominent Croatian poets and the founder of modern Croatian poetry. He was the creator and editor of numerous magazines. His first collection of poems “Lyrics” was awarded as the best poem collection of the year. His poem "The Trumpeter of Seine" also received a recognition, so his verses were already a part of the anthologies of poetry in German and French, as well as in the anthology of World poetry "Poeti del mondo". Poems: "Waterfall", "The Suburban Ballad", "Little Café," "The Hours of Doubt, the Hours of Pain" etc. Cesarić is a poet writing about the beauty of life, a poet of the town, love and human sympathy and connecting different generations, an aesthete who grew and perfected his own style.

Dobriša Cesarić was born in Pozega Slavonska 10th
January 1902. He spent his childhood in Osijek, where he completed elementary
school and four lower grades of high school. In 1912, in the midst of World War
I, he moved to Zagreb where he finished high school and, after graduating in
1920 he enrolled to study law, and a year later philosophy.

He spent a short time working in the Zagreb theatre, followed
by many years working as a librarian in the Hygienic Institute. After World War
II, he worked as an editor at the publishing company Zora. He died in Zagreb on
18 December 1980. He was a member of the
Yugoslavian Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He first appeared in the world of literature as a
fourteen-year-old in 1916, with the poem "I ja ljubim”. His first
collection of poems, "Lyrics", was published in 1931 and recognised
with an award from the Yugoslavian Academy. He collaborated in many literary
magazines, published literary reviews, and translated from German, Russian,
Italian, Bulgarian and Hungarian. He published several books: Lirika, Spasena
svijetla; Izabrani stihovi; Pjesme; Knjiga prepjeva; Osvijetljeni put; Goli
časovi; Izabrane pjesme, and released a collection of translations
of world poets.

His songs are an expression of the original experience; they
do not arise from preformed verbal imitations of fixed stereotyped forms. His
songs have a natural flow. And even when, ostensibly, they seem
"scrappy", behind them lies a thought, an idea; they are not a sequence
of coincidences but rather a sequence of internal thought-hieroglyphs, a sincere
outpouring of emotion.

Finally, one more trait ought to be noted of this poet's
writing, a trait not only rare but even unique in this region. And that is the
occasional but very convincing effort by the poet to revive in this art form a joy
which seemed to be suppressed, as if somehow unworthy. It is characteristic
that such ideas usually appear in the poet's evening and night motifs - an ambient
which sourced some other poets' darkest creations. Many of Cesarić's verses
from the darkened urban paysage rise before our eyes like some fluorescent
flowers.

And yet among the great Croatian lyricists, Cesarić was probably
the least prolific. In just over half a century he wrote no more than about one
hundred poems, most of which fit on a single page. It appears that many
"tears and words" remained hidden within Cesarić.